


the nature of a fighter

by apollothyme



Series: tell them all the stories about our little world [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, M/M, Slow Build, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollothyme/pseuds/apollothyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You learn many things about a person while you’re both watching over someone in a medical coma.</p><p>If it were up to Poe, they would simply call it a ‘coma’, but he doesn’t dare suggest the idea, knowing that doing so would make everyone in a ten-mile radius look at him like he spat on their grandmothers' faces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the nature of a fighter

**Author's Note:**

> may the threesome be with you. hit me up on [tumblr](http://rreykenobi.tumblr.com/) if you wanna yell about stuff or just comment here with your food for thought and breakfast.

You learn many things about a person while you’re both watching over someone in a medical coma.

If it were up to Poe, they would simply call it a ‘coma’, but he doesn’t dare suggest the idea, knowing that doing so would make everyone in a ten-mile radius look at him like he spat on their grandmothers' faces.

Semantics aside, Finn is asleep and no one is quite sure when he’s going to wake up. Soon, the doctors tell them, but probably not soon enough.

“Do you like grape?” Poe asks. 

Rey stares at him for a couple of seconds, examining him. She’s always doing that—examining people, examining _him_. It’s a little unnerving, truth be told, but Poe’s somewhat fond of it. He’s always been fond of people who push back, of fighters like him, and this girl has ‘fighter’ written all over her.

“I’ve never had it,” she says, which is code for ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’.

Poe hands her the drink, a rusty purple can, and snaps open his own. He sits down next to her on the tiny two-sitter next to Finn’s bed. Since the medical quarters are more busy and crowded than usual after the latest events, Finn is sharing his room with two resistance pilots who didn’t make it home in one piece. Those two are currently asleep. Not in a coma like Finn, just normal sleep, as most people are in the dead of night.

“It’s a fruit. These drinks taste nothing like it since they’re more sugar than anything else, but they’re not terrible,” Poe says as he watches her watching him.

Her eyes track the movement of his throat, the way he takes two long swallows and then lets out a little pleased sigh. If he doesn’t die in his ship during an epic battle that will be told through the ages, he’ll surely die of diabetes. Two worthy deaths, in their own ways.

After he’s put his can down, Rey opens hers and takes a careful sip. She grimaces as the taste hits her tongue, then takes another sip.

“Too sweet?” he asks.

“A bit,” she replies. She puts the can between her legs, holding it with both hands, and lifts her head so she can look at Finn.

“He’s going to be all right,” Poe tells her, making her snort.

“I know that,” she says as she takes another sip of her drink. “I’d just like to know when.”

“Soon. The Resistance has got some of the best doctors in the system.”

She nods. Poe watches her for another couple of seconds, tracing the line of her jaw with his eyes. She’s beautiful. Beautiful and strong. He can see how Finn fell for her the second he laid his eyes on her. 

Rey lays a hand on one of Finn’s arms and squeezes it. “I need to leave tomorrow afternoon. I have to find Luke and convince him to come back,” Rey says.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to say?”

“Yes. I’m going to tell him the Resistance and the Republic need him, now more than ever,” she says, sounding so headstrong Poe can’t help but grin.

“And?” he asks.

“And what?” she asks, finally taking her eyes off Finn to look at him.

“What else will you say?”

“What else do I need to say?” 

Poe shrugs. “I don’t know, I just figured after all these years, it would take a little more than that to persuade Luke Skywalker to come out of hiding. It’s not as if he doesn’t already know the Resistance needs him.” 

It’s hard to hide the bitterness and the anger from his voice, but he figures Rey won’t judge, not while Finn is in a coma in front of them. And if she does, Poe can always leave. It’s not as if he’s in the wrong. He has the right to be angry. He’s lost a lot fighting for the Resistance. The whole universe has. As they speak, millions mourn for the deaths of billions and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Countless lives were lost. Innocent civilians and fighters alike, people who deserved to be alive—who would have been alive, had Luke Skywalker never disappeared.

Poe looks at Finn and pats him on the leg. He means to pull back his hand, but in the end he leaves it on Finn’s knee. 

The kid will be fine. He damn better.

“What do you think I should say?” Rey asks him. She sounds a little hesitant, as if she knows she needs to be careful or Poe will snap in front of her, crumble into dust and become a ray of light all at once.

“Well, you could knee him in the groin? Or maybe just give him a little punch?” he suggests. It’s just the two of them and Rey won’t judge. She laughs, instead, and flicks him in the arm. “Or you could ask him to train you. To help you use the force,” he says. He looks over at Rey, but his body is still leaning towards Finn. A curious mix.

“You know about that?” she asks. She hasn’t told anyone, he knows, but unfortunately for her Chewie isn’t the best at keeping a secret, and rumors are hard to hold at bay in a closed group like theirs.

“I heard a thing or two,” he says.

She nods, to herself rather than to him. 

“Leia says he can teach me how to use it.”

“If you ask me, you’re already handling yourself pretty well,” Poe confesses, then keeps speaking when he notices how she’s looking at him. “But it wouldn’t hurt to learn a thing or two. There’s still a lot of work to be done here and we could use experienced fighters.”

“Thank you for the vote of trust,” she snorts. Poe wonders if she thinks he’s an idiot. He kind of feels like she does.

They fall silent for a moment and go back to watching Finn. Poe takes another big swallow of his drink while Rey limits herself to tiny sips like she doesn’t quite trust sugar.

Good kid. Smart kid. No diabetes for her.

Rey is the first to break the silence. “You know the bags under your eyes have reached epic proportions. When’s the last time you slept?” she asks.

“You’re one to talk,” Poe shoots back, giving her his coined ‘eff you, villain’ look of judgement.

“I sleep. I’m not sleeping right now, but I sleep. I took a nap just this afternoon,” she says to prove her point. “What about you?”

Poe takes another large swallow of his drink until there’s no more liquid in the can.

“I sleep on occasion,” he says after he’s shaken the can and given up trying to find any extra drops of gold.

“Has one of these occasions happened in the last week or so?” Rey looks at him like she already knows the answer, which is entirely unfair.

“Maybe,” Poe replies. 

“You don’t need to watch over Finn day and night,” she says, which puts Poe more than a little on the defensive.

“Neither do you,” he argues. “And things have been a little hectic lately. Having a couple of Republic planets and a huge death planet blow up does that. I’ve been busy.”

“I’m sure you’ll be of a lot of help when you pass out from exhaustion and make everyone worry about you,” Rey says. She smiles at Poe, who attempts to glare back even though he knows the woman in front of him is the least likely person in the universe to be intimidated by anyone’s glare.

“I can see why he likes you,” he says in the end, avoiding the subject with the grace of a Bantha.

“And I can see why he likes _you_ ,” she retorts. “Guess we both know Finn well.”

“Guess we do,” Poe agrees, which is a total lie, of course. At the state he’s in, the only things he knows are how to fly a T-70 X-wing fighter and how to burp the alphabet. Everything else is a goddamn mystery to him, but there’s no way he’s going to admit _that_ out loud.

“You’re going to be here when he wakes up, right?” she asks.

“Yes, of course,” Poe replies. He almost dares to ask _where else would I be?_ before he bites down on the words, letting the question linger, unspoken, on the tip of his tongue. He's already shown most of his cards to this girl, but that doesn't mean he has to show all of them.

“Good. He’s going to need you when he wakes up,” she says, looking at Finn with constellations in her eyes.

“He’ll need you too,” Poe says.

Rey gets up. “And I’ll be back,” she says. From the sway of her voice to the curve of her spine, her entire demeanor shouts ‘certainty’.

Poe is man enough to admit that he’s jealous. Even now after their victory, there was still so much loss to process, so much pain, and here was this kid, looking like she’d fight anyone with her bare fists if she had to. And the thing is, she wouldn’t just fight—she’d win too. Poe knows a people like her, he even likes to count himself among them, but he’s never met anyone so fundamentally strong and capable.

Oh yes, he’s jealous; jealous and awed, like he can’t decide on whether he wants to _be_ her or be _with_ her. Both, if he knows himself well.

Finn is among them too, although he probably doesn’t even know it, which puts him closer to Poe’s level.

“Take care of Finn while I’m gone. Don’t let any of the droids play doctor on him,” Rey asks. This time, she’s the one making him smile.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. You too,” she says. She moves to leave, but before she reaches the door she comes back and kisses Finn on the forehead.

Watching how sweet the two of them are together makes Poe feel like an intruder, but the convulsing shame isn’t enough to make him look away, which in turn only serves to make him feel worse. He really needs to sleep at some point in the next few hours, but he knows he won’t be able to if Rey leaves and Finn has to stay on his own.

“Go to sleep, Poe Dameron,” Rey tells him before she leans down and kisses him softly on the forehead, just like she’d kissed Finn. “This couch is more comfortable than it looks.”

“I can’t. Not while he’s still like this and you not--” he doesn’t finish his sentence, it’s the kind of confession that not even a supernova could rip from his throat, but still, what he’s said is enough.

“Oh,” Rey says. “ _Oh_ ,” she repeats after a few seconds when she finally gets it. “What if we switch? I’ll sleep here while you go sleep in your room.”

“You need a proper night’s rest far more than I do.”

“I don’t need you to decide that for me,” Rey says as she plops back on the couch, sitting by his side. “We can both sleep here.”

“Fine, but you should know that I snore,” Poe tells her, making her roll her eyes at him.

“I’m sure I’ll survive,” she says. Poe stares at her while she stares back. It’s not a fight he can win.

He shifts and turns on the couch until he’s comfortable, which isn’t all that difficult. Poe has slept in far worse places than this and Rey’s right, anyway. The couch is more comfortable than it looks. He looks over at Finn, who looks startlingly unguarded wearing just a hospital gown. Poe’s jacket is around somewhere, cut in half and rather unwearable. Poe would have to get it fixed before Finn woke up.

He is almost asleep when he’s woken up by two feet on his lap.

“I sleep better like this,” Rey tells him, sounding not the least bit apologetic.

Poe squeezes one of her calves and doesn’t say a word. He sleeps better like this too.


End file.
